A major warm spell has do most half the surface of the Greenland ice sheet to start melting , something that ’s highly strange for this time of year . And while this spike may pass , the gear could already be in motion for record - setting melt on the ice sheet ’s western flank .
Greenland has been scorching ( by Greenland standards ) for the preceding few days , with temperatures rising 10 - 20 degrees Celsius ( 18 - 36 degrees Fahrenheit ) above normal across the island . Ruth Mottram , a mood scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute , told Earther that the weather station at the top of the frosting sheet watch temperature reach above freezing on Wednesday and they were headed that elbow room again on Thursday . That redact them just a degree or so aside from coiffure the all - meter heat phonograph record for June , which is currently held by June 2012 .
https://gizmodo.com/greenland-is-now-losing-ice-six-times-faster-than-it-wa-1834215872
Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Flickr)
The ear in temperatures has caused a spike in thawing . Roughly 45 percent of the ice sheet surface has been melting . Normally , less than 10 per centum of the ice-skating rink sail surface is melting at this time of year . fit in to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center , Wednesday plant a daily record for the widest melt country on that date , with 275,000 satisfying miles — an area great than Texas — of the ice sheet ’s surface becoming a slushy , watery mess . Mottram said the much of the ice is probable to refreeze once the heat break , but it will be more primed to meld subsequently in the season .
Indeed , there are a number of factor working against Greenland ’s internal-combustion engine right on now . A jet of passion in April kickstarted the second - earliest starting line to the melt time of year on record . Mottram noted that the weather post on the summit of Greenland read minus-1.2 ° C [ 29.8 degrees Fahrenheit ] on April 30 , its fond ever April recording . May continued a trend of warm than normal weather .
“ In fact , one of my atmospheric condition prognosticator confrere rather drolly observe that you would have been more successful raise tomatoes outside in Kangerlussuaq [ in western Greenland ] than in most of Denmark this May , due to the very warm May without frosts there , ” she indite in an email .
That doesn’t look right.Image: NSIDC
This run - on - three months of ardent temperatures comes after a very dry winter for Greenland , particularly on the ice tabloid ’s western edge . Ice sheet need C to gain mass but also to act like a bright , white shield that excogitate sunlight aside , something scientists call the albedo force . The low snowpack means the meth sheet of paper ’s protection is much weaker than normal . Greenland ’s ice rink also has all sorts of schmutz on it as wildfire soot and other forms of calamitous carbon copy that darken its surface and soak up more of the sun ’s energy . Xavier Fettweis , a Greenland researcher at the University of Liege , called this place “ special . ”
“ Due to a lower wintertime aggregation than normal , the bare methamphetamine area has been exposed very betimes in this orbit heighten the melt due to the melt - albedo feedback , ” he told Earther . “ Therefore , at the get-go of the melt time of year , the snowpack along the west coast is now preconditioned to break up records of melt . ”
And unfortunately , record thawing is likely to be in Greenland ’s futurity due to the weather . The Arctic is warm double as tight as the rest of the world , but sure raw mood patterns can enhance that warmth over Greenland . In particular , the North Atlantic Oscillation ( NAO ) , a teeter-totter of high and low pressure sensation orbit , can really crank up the heating plant on Greenland when it ’s in a negative phase . In that frame-up , higher than normal pressure sensation plunk itself over Greenland and parts of the Arctic and can lock in warm atmospheric condition and sunny skies . The NAO is negative right now andforecasts indicateit ’s like to remain negative all summer .
Which mean this is almost certainly not the last warmth wave Greenland will see . It remains to be seen if we ’ll get a nuclear meltdown like July 2012 when the total methamphetamine sheet ’s surface destabilized , but regardless , it ’s a upsetting June for an ice sheet that , if it completely melted away , would raise ocean levels by about 24 metrical unit .
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